Justice LeagueThere’s a third season episode of How I Met Your Mother where Ted thinks he’s found the perfect girl, but doesn’t see the glaring flaw that’s driving the rest of his friends crazy. When it’s finally pointed out to him, there’s a sound of shattering glass as his illusions are smashed and the veil of perfection is lifted from his image of his girlfriend. In retaliation, he points out one of Lily’s major flaws to Marshall and the dominoes continue to fall until the clatter of breaking glass fills the air. By the end of the episode, everyone stands figuratively naked, their defects bared before the entire group.
This has been happening in serial fiction a lot lately. I don’t mean that this theme comes up a lot; I mean that serialized fiction – whether in comics, TV, or even the movies – presents an illusion that it knows what it’s doing. That there’s a master plan being followed and if you’ll just stick with the story, all will be revealed and eventually concluded in an emotionally satisfying way that makes complete sense. This is of course crap, as I’ve come to realize more and more the last several years. The sound of shattered glass is deafening.
I’m not suggesting that no one’s planning ahead at all. Obviously, there are writers who are. But writers can only plan so far and even the best of them eventually reach a point where they’ve said what they originally set out to say. In order to keep the story going, Sydney has to lose two years of her life, you have to introduce Nikki and Paulo, or Meredith has to betray Derek by interfering with his clinical trial. Or you have to reboot your entire comic book line.
AquamanLet’s make something else clear. I’m not talking about Jump the Shark moments. I’m not even sure I believe in Jump the Shark moments. With the right writers in place, long-running series can survive the audiences’ realization that the story is making itself up as it goes along. It doesn’t have to suck after that point, though sucking often occurs. That’s why I’m optimistic about DCnU. I’d like to be more optimistic, but having seen this kind of thing work in the past, I’m cautiously hopeful that it’ll work for DC in September. But whether it works or doesn’t, it certainly does rip back the curtain and reveal the little man working the Wizard’s controls.
With each of DC and Marvel’s events since Identity Crisis and Civil War, the companies have repeated a consistent marketing mantra: “It’s all been building to this.” Say what you will about hardcore fans’ only caring about stories that “count;” DC and Marvel have been encouraging that attitude by having each event flow into the next. The message is that what matters aren’t individual stories within particular series, but the gigantic stories of their entire universes. The illusion is that these gigantic stories are all headed somewhere.
Of course they aren’t. Nowhere, that is, except for the next event. Which will then lead to the one after that. There was no master plan that connected Civil War to Fear Itself. Or Identity Crisis to Brightest Day. Nor do I think anyone honestly believes that there was. It’s an illusion that the publishers sell and we happily buy. We’re not fools for buying it so long as we remember what it really is. It’s when we forget and start to believe the illusion that we set ourselves up for heartbreak.
BatgirlI think that’s why a lot of long-time DC fans are upset by DCnU. The Don’t Call It a Reboot is essentially DC’s shrugging its shoulders and saying, “You know what? We don’t know where to go next.” Back in the day, this used to happen all the time on individual series that weren’t working. They’d bring in a new creative team and announce a Bold, New Direction for the series. That’s what DCnU is, but on a much grander scale and with much deeper changes. DC seems to have realized that Brightest Day wasn’t leading anywhere they were excited to go, so they made plans to wrap that up and start over with something new. The tactic could work (and I’m rooting for it to), but it does destroy the illusion. And a lot of fans liked that illusion.
At the end of that How I Met Your Mother episode, the group of friends of course realized that they still accepted and loved each other in spite of their annoying habits. The shattering of illusions made their relationships stronger. I’m curious to see if that’s going to work for DC and its fans. No one with any sense believes that DC’s actively trying to divorce itself from its current audience in hope of trying to create an entirely new one. The question is: have they created enough good will with their current audience to weather the heartbreak of seeing behind the curtain? Will fans accept and love them anyway?
June 15, 2011 @ 12:00 PM by Michael MayTagged: dc comics, DC relaunch
It’s not so much people buying into the illusion as how badly management has been handling things. The audience has been leaving for a couple years. This is an accumulation of the former fanbase’s disgust with what has happened.
EmmJune 15, 2011 at 12:29 pm“Have they created enough good will with their current audience to weather the heartbreak of seeing behind the curtain? Will fans accept and love them anyway?”
If the results of the Relaunch Survey on CBR are anything to go by, the answer is mostly “No”
PaulJune 15, 2011 at 1:01 pmYes! Every time I hear the “master plan” schtick, I think of those nine Star Wars movies that Lucas had already written back in the late 70s, and I roll my eyes. Some times there is a plan (masterful or not), but mostly it’s made up as it goes, and that’s okay. If the end product is good, it doesn’t really matter if it was planned out five decades for five minutes ago.
AcerJune 15, 2011 at 1:15 pmSo THAT’S why there’ve been an onslaught of seemingly interconnected events over the past several years. Why didn’t anyone do anything to stop it from happening? Why doesn’t anyone do anything to stop it right now, so it can never again occur?
D Eric CarpenterJune 15, 2011 at 1:15 pmI guess I’m in the severe minority. I’m looking forward to the restart.
I don’t believe that this specific restart has been planned for a long time, but I do believe that DC has been looking for ways to retool and rejuvenate the line for the last few years. I think that every major event has been an attempt to clean things up and get interest going in the line.
But they never really caught on. I do believe that there has been some planning that ‘if X and Y and Z don’t work, then we’re going to pave it over and start again.’ And I think it got to that point. Brightest Day didn’t create the interest they wanted…so we’re left with the restart option.
That said…I’m actually positive. I’m going to give a lot of these titles a try.
As a kid, I loved finding something I liked and then finding out all I could about it. I began reading Legion of Superheroes during Earthwar and had a LOT of stuff to find out, which I took great pleasure in. Now, I kind of get that for the whole universe.
Now, I admit, I’ve been taken down that path before: Zero Hour had much of the same promise, but dropped the ball on the follow through. But I’m hoping, and not blindly–I’ve still got a cynical side, that this time they really do follow through.
I’m amazed at how adaptable negativity is, though…it’s really laughable. It’s gone from “Oh my God, they’re restarting everything!” to “Well, they may not be rebooting the WHOLE thing, but how come no one trusts Superman!” to “Okay, well…that’s him at the start…but that means the JSA never existed!” No matter what the news, the fan negativity finds some way to squeak on.
My take? I’ve got a feeling…nothing more than that…that this is the ‘official’ restart of the multiverse. Yes, yes, I know…that means we’re going back to the Silver Age. The horrors! Modern writing looking at the Silver Age.
I suspect Morrison’s Multiversity may have adapted to the new situation…where we might actually see an Earth 1/Earth 2 kind of setup where the Golden Age did occur on another world, but on this world, Superman is the first…
Sort of like it was way back when.
I don’t know. But I’m looking forward to finding out and hoping that it doesn’t crash and burn.
SquashuaJune 15, 2011 at 1:19 pmI do believe the modern shattered illusion began in DC Comics with 52.
Simon DelMonteJune 15, 2011 at 1:30 pmI am a Mets fan. My illusions have been shattered by true pros far more often than DC ever has, or ever could.
NYJJune 15, 2011 at 1:37 pmShattered illusion? Sorry, no. Disillusioned? Oh, hell yeah. What this boils down to is “We’ve made such a mess of the DCU by allowing every writer that comes along to do whatever they like with no consideration for past OR future continuity that we don’t have a clue what to do, so we’ve decided to toss all the history that inspired you to hang in this long and start all over with THE EXACT SAME CREATORS that screwed things up to begin with…see, it’s not that the stories were bad, it’s that Superman was wearing his underwear on the outside that was keeping the sales down.”
ShellyJune 15, 2011 at 1:47 pmI did not have any illusions shattered. I am about to have characters I know and love as they are now torn from me. I’m getting too old for yet another reboot or whatever they want to call it where I have to keep track of what’s canon and what’s no longer canon. Better they should have just started all over. Said from September on, we’re starting from scratch and then done just that. Start with Superman coming to Metropolis and slowly give us his origin. Ditto Batman and Wonder Woman. And that would’ve been Sept. In October, bring in the others, with them at the start of their heroing careers, meeting each other for the first time, learning secret identities, whatever. A whole new DCU. That I would’ve been intrigued by enough to read. What they’re giving us, not so much. My pull list of 25 or so DC books will be going down to 4 or 5. I want to get Batwoman since she’s still new. And I want to try Voodoo and Grifter because they weren’t part of the regular DCU and I don’t have the same attachment to them as the regular DC gang. Plus, I really like both of them.
I’m looking into non-DC/non-Marvel titles to start reading, too.
DrunkJackJune 15, 2011 at 2:01 pmI just realized that if this DCnU thing has no heroes prior to Superman it in effect means Starman didn’t happen in this universe.
Which is fine. I’m not saying those stories somehow mean less to me. But…a DCU without Jack Knight, even a retired Jack Knight, is not something I’m really interested in beyond being the place where Superman is, in my head it goes Superman, Starman, Deadman, then maybe Batman when it comes to solo DCU characters. My second favorite character in the DCU is now…not there, or his stories happened in a very different way. That book was all about the history of the DCU. Since that history is negated so is the book’s ties to it.
But not what I want from my DCU. I mean, if you’re going to do this, allow James Robinson to come back and tell a new story with the character, offer him the chance at a second go, if he wants it. Give him a chance to work his voice into the DCU now, since you’ve removed his last addition. Seems only right since you’re wiping his work from your history. And at least throw a bone to us who loved the book, give someone else a shot at creating a new Starman. It doesn’t have to be Jack Knight. Doesn’t even have to be a Knight. But since that book was all about the passing of the name, and the fact that there has been a Starman in the DCU for decades…why isn’t there one in the DCnU?
Starman gave me years of entertainment. This just seems…stupid. You can dig up I…Vampire but no Starman?
Another IanJune 15, 2011 at 2:23 pmThis whole thing with the so called DCnU has been kind of interesting to watch unfold from the perspective of someone firmly in the Marvel camp. I’ve read the odd monthly DC book, but never for more than a year or two. Usually stick with the Vertigo stuff. I think the only thing this big reboot has done for me was pique my interest in some of the fringe comics…Demon Knights and Frankenstein for sure…but both of those I would only consider because of the writers attached to them…and both of those are probably on the chopping block already and they haven’t even come out yet. Oh well.
Joe HJune 15, 2011 at 2:25 pmNo illusions shattered here. I knew that this was Marvel and DC’s game. Figured it out a year or two into reading comics. Then a year or two later I started to get bored. It’s not that the stories were any more or less good, I just decided I wanted off the ride. Now I only get the stories I care about if I have enough room after the indie and manga I get.
AdamJune 15, 2011 at 4:02 pmYES. I’ve slowly been phasing out my monthly readings, and DC’s relaunch has solidified that for me. I’m tired of believing that it all matters when, really, it’s all just cyclical and doesn’t matter. Characters have a certain status quo, slowly deviate away from it, have several major storylines and radical changes, and then go back to status quo. All with the illusion that it’s going somewhere. It’s not.
I forget who first realized that superheroes lack a natural ending. It was either Frank Miller (leading to The Dark Knight Returns) or Alan Moore (leading to his thankfully rejected Twilight of the Superheroes). Or maybe it was Neil Gaiman with his “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?”, which basically made the point that Batman will go on forever and ever, so keep buying, readers! Well, whoever discovered it, I’ve become increasingly sympathetic to that viewpoint: these stories just go on, and on, and on, and don’t stop.
The only one of DC’s 52 I *might* have bought is Morrison’s Action Comics. But you know what? In 5 years, we’ll be getting another new origin for Superman. They might as well do one every year now. It might be good, it might not. Doesn’t matter; in enough time, we’ll flip to something else.
Twin1toddJune 15, 2011 at 4:19 pmI will check out the reboot and I have not bought a new comic in 2 years.It is risky.But I sure hope all of the creators have been tied to their new titles for at least 12 issues.If not ,this will be an epic fail.Good Luck DC.
Wesley SmithJune 15, 2011 at 7:12 pmNYJ summed up nicely the way I feel about the whole super-hero comic industry. The problem isn’t so much that this is a bold new direction for the company, it’s that this is ANOTHER bold new direction for the company. DC and Marvel have both had a strong tendency over the past ten years or so to proclaim that THIS IS THE STORY THAT MATTERS. But after having THE BIGGEST STORY WE’VE EVER TOLD every year for 10 years, it results in the disillusionment and something that can only be called (forgive me for saying it) “event-fatigue.” I know we’ve faded away from the phrase over the past few years, but after dealing with the hype and empty promises year after year with THE WORLD’S MOST IMPORTANT STORY EVER TOLD!, it makes you yearn for the day when you could plunk down your $1.00 (or $.65 or $.35 or whatever) with the knowledge that you would get a complete adventure for your investment. Or at the very least you wouldn’t be forced to buy a dozen or more different crossover titles in order to understand the story that you originally paid to read.
The turning point for me was Infinite Crisis. Between the Countdown Special, The prologue minis, Infinite Crisis itself, the epilogue minis and specials, OYL and 52, and the fact that not one series or special (that I can remember) had a satisfactory conclusion because they all fed into something else that promised to give you the rest of the story, I just got fed up. That ended up as one of the major reasons I dropped collecting monthly titles entirely several years back.
The relaunch of the DCU is kind of like that. While I am optimistic about this event and genuinely looking forward to to some of the new titles and concepts, I’m afraid that they’ll require reading every title in order to enjoy just one. And I only say that because that’s been their MO for the past decade. If I knew that I could enjoy any super-hero title (say, Firestorm) by itself and that each title would be at least a little separated from every other title, I’d be a lot more inclined to jump into the new DC (“There’s no stopping us now!”) a little deeper because it wouldn’t require me to buy EVERY title published EVERY month.
As it is I’ll probably pick up Justice League and a small handful of titles in September (which will still be the biggest investment I’ve made in comics in several years) just to get an idea of the directions they’re taking, but I sincerely doubt I’ll follow any of the titles more than a month or two, and I probably won’t even buy any of the trades when they’re eventually collected.
I truly hope DC takes this new starting point as an opportunity to tell individual stories instead of relying on horizontal continuity, but I sincerely doubt they’ll do it. I wish them the best on this project, but I can’t imagine this experiment lasting for more than 24 months before being dubbed a colossal failure, re-instituting a more traditional continuity, and jettisoning most or all of the leadership by SDCC 2013. And I’m guessing we’ll start to see severe cracks in the plan by no later than SDCC 2012.
(Good lord I’m verbose.)
MIchael MayJune 15, 2011 at 7:38 pmI truly hope DC takes this new starting point as an opportunity to tell individual stories instead of relying on horizontal continuity…
Me too, dude. Me too.
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